When I was little my brother Bryce taught me how to bake chocolate chip cookies. Not just any cookies, our grandmothers recipe. I became a master of those cookies, but in the beginning my brother would have to help me a lot, I couldn’t even mix in all the flour by myself because I arms would get too tired.

That’s where my help ended. Neither of my parents were very good cooks and my father worked out of town a lot, so I started experimenting with food. It started with mixing spices into canned soups to give them more flavour, and soon after I was trying to make my own stews.

By the time I was in my early teens my father would let me do all the baking and a lot of the food preparation for events he would host at the house. He bought me a decorating kit so that my cookies and cupcakes could be prettier and I practiced making flowers over and over again until I could whip out a rose on the first try.

Then my mother and I discovered the greatest recipe for cheesecake we’ve ever had. Now I won’t disclose what it is, but we were low on cream cheese so we subbed out half of the cream cheese for something else and it has been my signature dessert ever since.

As I got older I was alone more and more in the house and I was becoming more aware of how badly I was eating, consuming mass amounts of ramen noodle and ice cream, so I started working more with fruit and vegetables. Making more fruit smoothies and vegetable based stews with less meat in them.

As an adult I put more time into cooking for others. This took a little adjustment as I love my food spicy and heavy with dill and I had become accustomed to cooking for one. These days I’ve been trying a lot of new recipes. Unfortunately for my man, I don’t actually follow recipes so it’s hard to duplicate results. I tend to take the idea of a recipe and play with it to suit my taste better. My poor man can’t keep up because I don’t often document what I add or take away, which makes it really hard for him to try to make the same dish.

I have begun writing down my recipes, which I think I will share on the blog at some point. But that’s how I went from a little girl amazed by my brothers cookies to a capable cook myself. I think passion is really what made me try, I enjoy cooking very much.